I forward this to the group, as his text addresses us, plural, not just me, and
since I responded to it, assuming that it went to the list.
Stephen
----- Forwarded message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----
Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2006 08:54:08 +0100
From: philip davies <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: philip davies <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [Megillot] some recent publications
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I am disappointed to see so much effort still being expended on the
identification of the Wicked Priest.
Fine, let's enjoy some speculation that if there were such a
character and if the depiction of him were largely accurate, we could
work out, on a percentage basis, which of the priests we know about
best fits the bill. That has been done many times already.
But what are the chances that we have preserved in the pesharim
enough reliable data to pursue this quest? I am reminded of the
excesses of biblical archeology in which bits of information were
extracted from biblical texts and fitted into known historical data,
without any care to examine the nature of the sources from which
these nuggets are drawn. Can we be a bit more open about the
methodology here? When and why do we take data as historical? Do we
take anything and see if it works? That does not necessarily proves
the historicity of the reference.
There are good reasons to be cautious; there is no WP in the D
material; and a comparison of the language in the Hodayot and
pesharim, especially the soubriquets, might suggest that the pesharim
have created individual characters out of more general terms in H.
Yes, this conclusion might be wrong, but it can't be dismissed. And
should we assume that historical data in the pesharim are necessarily
historical? If so, let's look for Matthew's star, for the route the
Holy Family took to to Egypt, for Herod's massacre.
I think the issue boils down to this: do we want to know as much as
possible even if the quality of the knowledge decreases the harder we
try? Or are we better off being more certain about what we know an
recognizing where speculation begins. The difference? Speculation is
OK, but very soon speculation becomes something on which we build
more speculation.
DSS scholarship has many wonderful examples of this building of sand
upon sand; we have taken almost as long dismantling 'facts' as in
creating them. Knowing what we don't know is rather important. and to
my mind, the identity (or even existence) of an individual figure to
whom the title 'wicked priest'; can apply is not something we know;
I am not even sure there is such a person to know. Is anyone?
I'm happy to for people to carry on with their guessing game as long
as they acknowledge they are guessing and have no reason to be sure
that the literary sources are sufficiently firm for any conclusions
to be other than speculation. Which means that we can't make any
further hypotheses about such hypotheses.
--
Philip Davies
Department of Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield
----- End forwarded message -----
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